Does it ever make sense to withhold compassion? Does it make sense to hold back support, financial or otherwise, unless someone “deserves” it? Do you need to behave or act in a certain way to deserve good things or love in your life? During a recent meeting with a leadership team, we discussed how to support a team member experiencing some challenges and, as a result, was in a pattern of reactivity, negativity, and creating some chaos.

Are you looking backward to determine how to move forward? Are you looking to the past to determine what's possible for your future? What if the past is not a good measure of what's possible or our potential? What if what worked in the past is yesterday's wisdom, and something new is required moving forward? When I look to my past, I can find all sorts of evidence of what will or won't work.

Often in business or our leadership, we respect pushing through, and as a result, we override our feelings or desires. We have this idea that strength means we ignore any internal resistance and see it as a sign of weakness. Popular culture would have us believe that to be successful in business, we must push, sacrifice, ignore our desires, and “buck up.”

In hindsight, I can see that much of my personal development and curiosity to improve myself was focused on overcoming what is, put simply, the human experience. I had sorted out the good bits and bad bits and thought success meant I felt the good bits more than the bad ones. Doing what I could to avoid or overcome anything I had deemed “bad” or “uncomfortable” meant a lot of analysis and figuring out how to be different.